What's your favorite striker-fired action based on internal engineeing and design?

[OlongJohnson]

I like the external grip of the SD9VE, but the slide is bigger and chunkier than a G19. Even more important is the execution of the internals. I've had one mechanical failure that would almost certainly have tied up the gun (it was disassembled for cleaning when the recoil spring assembly spontaneously disassembled itself) and definitely required parts to fix, and the striker was defective (curved like a banana) when I got it. Both needed parts were supplied without issue by S&W and there's a permanent preventive solution for the RSA, but I can't recommend the pistol for a beginner because of those issues.

Details are here.

[DocGKR]

Glock is simple, robust, easy to service, and extremely well proven. Probably S&W next, as it is also relatively straightforward to work on and has a decent service record.

[YVK]

For me, there are all those various plastic curiosities that @GJM buys and shoots for a day or half USPSA season, and there are Glocks.

[GJM]

Glock is simple, robust, easy to service, and extremely well proven. Probably S&W next, as it is also relatively straightforward to work on and has a decent service record.

I am not familiar enough with the M&P, so has anyone done a deep dive on the details of the M&P's safety systems, like we have on various other platforms?

For me, there are all those various plastic curiosities that @GJM buys and shoots for a day or half USPSA season, and there are Glocks.

haters gonna hate.

[arcfide]

Wow, I had no idea that so many people would chime in on this. Thanks for all the feedback. It seems that the Glock is a clear favorite, and for good reasons. Thank you @Tom_Jones for putting together that analysis of what makes a Glock a Glock.

I haven't had a chance to really dig into the way that the VP9, P320, or Steyr M9A1 works. Does anyone have a comparison of how the different modular designs operate compared to one another under the hood? Of course, it would also be good to compare them to the Glock.
@Tom_Jones and anyone else who might have the knowledge, do you have a thought on how the APX design compares under the hood with the Glock, P320, and Steyr designs? I ask because I have access to an APX, Glock, and PPQ, but I don't have ready access to the Steyr or P320.

Since I haven't chimed in with my own thoughts yet, I can say that the Glock was really impressive inside, but my thoughts on the PPQ have changed a bit after I better understand how it works. After seeing how little tension there is actually holding the striker back and some of the other aspects of the design, it's clear to me how they managed to get such signature trigger pull, but it's also clear that I'm even less comfortable with it now than I was before. A great bit of engineering there, but probably not really in the direction that I find as compelling. It was also rather complicated internally compared to the Glock and APX that I had.

The "parts count" thing seems funny, but both Glock and Beretta specifically highlight the "few number of parts" that they have in their guns. The Glock is 35 I guess, and the APX is 45.

What struck me about the APX was how different the parts looked and appeared to function compared to the Glock. I liked the internal design of the Glock and the APX much better than the PPQ.

The APX design was very "open" inside. The parts were all relatively big and chunky, meaning sort of stout looking. The Glock seems to have a preference for a number of flat, sheet-like parts that are shaped in various ways. The APX on the other hand, was mostly all cylinders, torsion springs, and squat little cylinder-like parts with arms on it. The springs on the APX were much bigger than the springs in the PPQ or Glock. It was interesting to notice that the trigger spring also appears to serve as the slide stop spring. The trigger spring on the APX is much larger than the trigger spring for the Px4 that I have.

The travel in the firing pin block appears to be much greater in the APX than in the other designs, and it is situated further back than the other two, because the lever that rotates to lift the firing pin block rotates around the same part around which the striker "sear"/cocking lever rotates.

I found the method for decocking the APX to be somewhat clever and dirt simple. There is a wall in the slide that prevents lateral movement of the two levers mentioned above, both of which are under rotational and compression spring tension. When you retract the slide to the rear slide tension is released from the striker, the slide comes out of battery and the wall that prevents movement of the striker cocking lever moves out of the way of that lever. You can then simply push on the decocking button exposed on the outside to push the striker cocking lever out of the way, which releases the striker at reduced tension loads, but does not deactivate the striker block. Once I saw how it worked, it was just sort of "duh, that's easy" sort of moment.

The advantage of the APX design compared to the Glock, from what I can tell, is in smoothness of the trigger pull throughout the trigger press, since the trigger spring is solely responsible for that, and there's nothing for the trigger bar to rub against during this travel, that accounts for the smooth take-up of the APX trigger. Then you hit the very distinct wall once the trigger bar makes contact with the striker block lever. Disassembly is also a little slicker because you don't have to retract the slide while rotating the takedown lever after the striker has been released, which also means that the disassembly lever can be designed to automatically lock on reassembly.

I also found the way that the trigger resets sort of fascinating, since it doesn't use a connector, but the trigger bar is moved down by the slide, allowing the cocking lever and striker block lever to return to their original positions. Resetting the trigger then involves only the trigger returning under spring tension and the trigger bar lifting back up into position.

This all results in a very smooth trigger, but I guess the question brought up by Tom_Jones' post is how Beretta deals with the free movement of the cocking lever and firing block lever. My intuition is saying that because they are on opposite sides of the same rotational axis, when strong momentum attempts to rotate the cocking lever down to release the striker, that same momentum would generally want to push the firing block lever down as well, rather than up, which it would need to do in order to allow the cocking lever down. The two parts are also independent so that even if the cocking lever does go down far enough to release the striker, I don't believe that is far enough to allow the striker block to be disengaged without something else also moving the striker block up further. There are also two springs operating on these levers in the same direction: the firing block spring that pushes down on the firing block lever, and the main torsion spring that pushes the cocking lever up. The trigger also cannot move to any point where the levers begin to be disengaged without the trigger safety being disengaged first.

It appears then that Beretta uses at least two of the three things that Tom highlights in his post on the Safe Action. However, assuming my intuition is correct about the design of the cocking lever, I wonder how that independently articulating "sear"/safety block design would work over the mono-bar design of the Glock? At least to me, it seems much more intuitive and "obvious" how the Glock design prevents releasing the striker, whereas it isn't as obvious to me how Beretta tries to achieve the same thing.

I would love it if someone with more knowledge on these things than I could explain what, if anything, is designed into the APX design to help with momentum based releasing of the cocking lever.

From an engineering aesthetic point of view, the fewer parts and simplicity of operation of both the APX and Glock win out for me over the more complicated parts count and designs of the PPQ, but I'll have to also admit that the parts design and layout of the APX is more aesthetically appealing to the engineer in me than the Glock parts simply based on the size, shape, arrangement, and amount of "free space" within the design. This is particularly pleasing to me since it allows me to thoroughly clean all of the parts without having to completely strip it down. The modular chassis is open enough to allow for a deep cleaning of the parts without taking the chassis down to its individual parts.

All that remains is to better understand how the two designs approach the safety aspects of the cocking lever releasing the striker undesirably.

And woah, I think I enjoy this stuff too much. Sorry for the long post!

[dpadams6]

I feel like a broken record saying it, but the Walther P99 AS & P99c AS give you almost exactly that. Granted, they're "weird," but they're striker-fired, 9 pound DA/4 pound SA/Decocker (no manual safety). The P99 is basically G19-sized, except that it's a touch taller due to the slide being taller. The P99c is equivalent to a G26 in the same way.

If you end up looking for something different again, they might be worth a look.

Yep, and the more I study and learn about the p99as series, the more I think, it might be the ultimate design, out of all the striker fired, FOR ME.

[Rex G]

HK P7. This was an easy answer, as the P7 is the only striker-fired auto pistol I truly favor. Of course, it is not perfect. I owned a pair of them, in the mid-Eighties.

[Doc_Glock]

Interesting post. Makes me want to look further in to an APX.

Are there any video or graphic resources or images you used as you looked at the APX internals?

[ReverendMeat]

OP, right on with the APX, I noticed the same things last time I had one apart. Impressive in its simplicity, in clever ways, without straight copying a glock like some do. Another you should take a peek at is the ruger american, its fcg looks completely different than anything else, took me a good minute to figure out how it worked. I also appreciate the p99/ppq for the reasons you mentioned but it is disconcerting how easy it seems to be for the fp to drop without a trigger pull. That's the price we pay for the "shoter and lighter = better" mentality.

[arcfide]

Interesting post. Makes me want to look further in to an APX.

Are there any video or graphic resources or images you used as you looked at the APX internals?

I didn't need any graphical resources to examine my APX, because the parts are literally all visible. Aside from the extractor setup and the internal springs used for the striker and the striker block, every other part is completely visible when field stripped. Internally, there is a conical tapered compression spring that holds the striker block down, and then there is a coil compression spring that pushes against the striker in opposition to the main striker spring. The main striker spring is visible behind the striker with the pistol field stripped.

The Beretta APX manual, available on the Beretta website, has an exploded parts diagram that is of use as well.

I'm thinking of making a video detailing the APX mechanism since I didn't see one around, but that will take me a while, since I'm quite busy at the moment.